Sevilla’s dream, Albanese’s sprint
A restless Giro-a nasty crash forced Tao Geoghegan Hart, one of the favorites, to retire-continues to see EOLO KOMETA among the absolute stars. Here’s how, and here’s why.
The day’s breakaway told another chapter in the beautiful story of Diego Sevilla: the Spanish rider who has lived his entire career in the ranks of Fundacion Contador, and is now living his dream at the Giro d’Italia. Diego did well to hit the attack along with five other riders: Filippo Magli (Green Project-Bardiani CSF-Faizanè), Alexander Konychev and Veljko Stojnić (Team Corratec – Selle Italia), Thomas Champion (Cofidis), and Laurenz Rex (Intermarché Circus Wanty). The peloton, and especially the sprinters’ teams, never left too much room for the breakaway, but the small group of attackers did a great job of hanging on as long as they could. And for a boy who dreamed of racing the Giro as a child, experiencing a day on the attack must have been a beautiful thing.
Sprint it was to be, and sprint it was with Pascal Ackermann winning in a photo finish over Jonathan Milan, then Britain’s Mark Cavendish and Denmark’s Mads Pedersen. And our own Vincenzo Albanese, once again splendid in jumping into the sprint along with the pure sprinters to hit another place: 6th, for yet another team top 10. Then the blue-colored adventure continues for Davide Bais, who maintains the lead in the climbers’ classification and enjoyed another podium finish: bravo, Davide!
Diego Sevilla: “Today we knew the breakaway would start right away, because it was a quiet stage favorable to the sprinters. There was a headwind all day, the climbs were not very hard, I managed to stay in the breakaway even though I wasn’t feeling great: but I enjoyed this day in my first Giro. I was looking forward to being in the breakaway and showing off the team jersey. Also, Alba got another great position in the sprint, so it continues to be a great Giro for us.”
Stefano Zanatta: ” And another stage is gone, we continued our Giro by putting Sevilla in the day’s breakaway to give him also a chance to show himself and show our jersey all day long: good job, he didn’t win the GPMs but Bais will take care of that in the coming days. Maestri gave a nice hand to Albanese who was not so well this morning but then in the race he had no problems, Mirco gave him a nice help, and Vincenzo was good to find another important placing.”
